I’ve been a fan of Writing Michael Lewis for a long time – even before “Moneyball” was published in 2003. I have read his books and taught his writing in my courses.
When the Colorado Rockies announced they were bringing in Paul DePodesta as president of baseball operations, my thoughts were less, “You mean the guy from the Cleveland Browns?” then “You mean the Harvard guy who made Michael Lewis famous?”
And since we’re all friends here and you all know I’m an English major, I can say that my initial interests were less in baseball than in what it was like for a very young Paul DePodesta to find himself transformed into a character by one of our finest living nonfiction writers.
So I asked him about it, and he was good enough to answer questions about a part of his life in the rearview mirror.
(And yes, I asked about OBP.)
Here are some highlights from that conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
Renee Dechert: What was it like for you as a young man to be made into a character by one of the great nonfiction writers in “Moneyball?”
Paul DePodesta: It’s hard to describe. It’s such an unusual circumstance. Michael is such a brilliant writer. He is also very interesting. So it was great to hang out with Mike and just talk to him about the game, the industry, the team, the things that we were doing because again, he was both insightful and funny and everything else.
At the time we spent time with him, he wasn’t actually writing a book. He was assigned to write an article for ‘The New York Times Magazine’. And only as he went deeper and deeper did he decide at some point that it was rich enough to be a book.
I think at that moment, Billy [Beane] and I probably got a little scared about what might be in it, but I never went into my conversations with Michael thinking that this was going to be a book. It was just a national writer asking us questions. What was unusual was that it was Michael Lewis.
RD: Was that overwhelming for you when the book came out and suddenly everyone in baseball knew who you are?
PDP: I probably felt quite vulnerable. When Michael gave us the galleys in spring training the next year, I think Billy and I went into our office, closed the door, and didn’t come out until we were done. Or sometimes we’d jump into each other’s offices and say, “Have you gotten to this part yet? Did you see this and what was different?”
To put ourselves back in those days: it was mainly newspapers and magazines. There was some on the internet, but it was not the main medium for news. So in our role, we’re used to articles coming out that could be critical or whatever, but two days later another article came out, and it was pretty much gone.
This was a book. It wouldn’t go away, especially since it was a book written by Michael Lewis.
But Billy was, I think, very insightful. He said, “I just hope that when people read this, they see it as more than just a baseball story, and that there is more in it for them.” And so far that has happened beyond our wildest expectations. And that part of it, I think, was really satisfying.
And now you look back and think – at least I do – how lucky I was to be a part of that, not just in Oakland, but even to be a part of the whole, I don’t know, movement that Michael helped create.
RD: You opted out of the movie. Are you prepared to explain why you made that decision?
PDP: Certainly. I mean, it was very clear that they were making a movie, and not a documentary, right?
And it’s very hard to give yourself to someone and say, “Okay, play with me. Yes, be me.”
And no matter what you say or do, for the rest of my life, 99.9% of the people I meet will just assume I said or did those things, and that’s hard to feel comfortable with. And that was actually the only reason.
The people were great to me. The actors were great to me, the director, I mean, everyone. I thought: Jonah [Hill] In the end, I did a fantastic job and didn’t have to worry about anything. But before they actually started filming, there was a lot of uncertainty about how this would all turn out.
So that was actually the reason. I was just nervous what it would be like. But it turned out I had nothing to be nervous about.
RD: So what did Billy do when he found out Brad Pitt was going to play him?
PDP: Oh, I think Billy took it well. I think it was probably quite appropriate. I mean, look, Billy has incredible charisma and incredible presence. So I think Brad captured that pretty well.
RD: How have your feelings about OBP changed?
PDP: It’s funny. There were a lot of things we were doing at the time that were beyond the basics, but it was probably the best way in our conversations with Michael to express, at least directionally, what we were really doing. We tried to find value in the game. And at that point in the game, on-base was something that was probably a little underrated. There have been times over the last twenty years where it has become overvalued and has gone through something of a cycle.
You still have to get on base more than the other person if you want to win. So that’s still kind of fundamentally true. But there are a lot of other things that we looked at then, and certainly that we look at today, that are important levers to win.
RD: The fact that Lewis didn’t really focus on pitching at all, do you think that’s a problem?
PDP: No. I mean, Michael is such a compelling storyteller, right? And I think there were even some things about our pitching that would fit his storyline. And certainly what he was talking about Chad Bradfordbut in terms of the big three starters, there were certain things about those guys that would absolutely fit into the story.
You know, Barry Zito didn’t throw particularly hard. Tim Hudson was seen as too small to be a high-inning starting pitcher, and things like that. So again, it would fit into the story.
But I think at some point, talking about every player on our roster, the message of what the book was really about probably got diluted. It wasn’t necessarily about each type of individual player or their characteristics. It was really about: how does this team put together a competitive team with so few resources?
So it was probably more of a David and Goliath story than it was about the individuals.
RD: You said you are still interested in irrationality.
RD: How does that come about Coors Field and this track?
PDP: Are you suggesting that I was irrational when I took this job? [Laughs]
RD: Not at all, but was that in your mind?
PDP: I think this is a particularly exciting challenge, and I think there are a lot of things that are different here than anywhere else, and how that affects our decision-making and our evaluations. I think this all fits together in the sense that we have to be very, very careful about how we do things. We can’t do things the way everyone else has done them, or how we’ve done them in other places, how exactly, how we break down pitchers or how we think about hitting. We really need to approach this with fresh eyes, and I find that very interesting and a lot of fun.
Ultimately, because I’m really a book nerd interested in how different people perceive the same situation, I wanted to end this by looking at the “Afterword” Lewis wrote after the book’s publication and an unexpected response.
Here’s Lewis on the process of writing the book:
[Billy Beane] and the other critical character in Oakland’s front office, assistant GM Paul DePodesta, were never actually rude to me, but they made it pretty clear that they had more interesting things to do than talk to me. The only power they ever had over my project was to throw me out of their office or clubhouse – which they did occasionally. But the sad truth is that I was somewhat indifferent to them. As far as they knew, I wasn’t even writing a book about the Oakland A’s. I was writing a book about the clash of reason in baseball. (They weren’t the only ones whose eyes glazed over when I tried to explain what I was up to.)
And here he is on Billy Beane:
Until they saw it, the Oakland front desk had only a vague idea of what my book would look like. The Oakland staff read the book when the reviewers read it, about a month before the hardcover hit stores. Each member of that staff had a slightly different reaction to it. Beane’s was like horror. He was surprised that so many of the things were about him and disturbed that I had portrayed him as a maniac. I probably should have felt more guilty about that than I did. I assumed most readers understood that this wasn’t the whole man, and that I had my own agenda. I wanted to capture Beane doing what he did so well and interestingly: valuing, acquiring and managing baseball players. And when he did this, he was a bit of a maniac in his most intense moments.
I wrote to Michael Lewis’s publisher to see if I could send him a few questions about a young Paul DePodesta, but I never heard back.
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